A scuba diver breaks the surface, quickly removes the mask, eager to show the treasures found below.
Ob/scene Festival is about to cross the surface. After a year of preparation, dialogue, care and support, the moment we have been waiting for is here. But there is a difference. Rather than bringing the treasures to the surface, we invite you to dive in—to submerge yourself in environments where things might not be what they appear to be: disguised, transformed, masked or hiding in a cloud of smoke, before passing into forms that linger somewhere on the outskirts of recognition.
Somebody recently said that in a time of post-truth, when the biggest liar always seems to win, art must turn its attention to truth. Not by exposing facts or delivering information, but by taking on the much stranger task of producing truth. Not this or that truth, not the truth, but restoring the possibility that truth might appear at all. And truth can only be encountered beneath the surface, in those vague and uncertain places we call ob-scene.
This year, Ob/scene brings together Korean and international artists across performance, dance, theatre, music and lectures. We believe in exchange, but exchange doesn’t have to mean agreement. An encounter doesn’t have to result in understanding. Art doesn’t always have to explain itself, and treating an audience seriously means trusting its curiosity, intelligence and capacity to get lost.
For a few days, we invite you to spend time with works that follow their own logics, shift shape, take detours and occasionally disappear into the fog. Some might bring us together; others might make the familiar strange enough that we no longer know exactly where we stand. So, rather than showing you what we found, we invite you to come along. The water is deep. Let’s dive in.
